Homewood to move ahead with demolition of empty office building after committee meeting

View full sizeHomewood acquired this four-story office building on Bagby Drive in 2004. Recently, the city council voted to demolish the building, which has deteriorated. (File)

HOMEWOOD, Alabama -- The finance
committee of the Homewood City Council voted Monday to let the city proceed
with the demolition of an abandoned office building now owned by the city after
the city officials discussed a resident's concerns about the plan.

Homewood
resident Kevin Forsyth had said at a past meeting and in emails with city
officials that he believed the empty building at 90 Bagby Drive could still be
usable, and that the city was making a mistake by planning to demolish it.

After an
hour-long discussion with the city council, Mayor Scott McBrayer, city
administrators and local engineers, the council's finance committee agreed to
move forward with the demolition and Forsyth said the new information eased his
concerns.

"We had a
lot more information [Monday] than we had before," Forsyth said after the
meeting.

In 2004, the
office building at 90 Bagby Drive was included in a sale of land to the city by
Regions, the mayor explained at the meeting. The building, which was already
known to be structurally deficient, was included in the sale for free. The city
wanted other buildings in the same area in the hopes of moving public safety
facilities --including a place to do maintenance on the city's fleet -- to that
area, he said.

"We were trying
to do what we could to get whatever property we could get" in 2004, said Ginger
Busby, the former city council president who led the negotiations with Regions.

Forsyth
expressed concerns that the city planned to demolish the building when it
didn't have a planned use for the property in the future and that, while its
walls are at risk of collapse, it could be fixed at a lower cost than a new
building could be built.

City
officials and engineers -- including Greg Tucker, now with Tucker-Jones
Engineers Associates, who evaluated the building and found it deficient more
than a decade ago -- explained that any new use for the building would require
it be brought up to code, and fixing the structure's crumbling walls would be
prohibitively expensive. The new uses proposed included moving police and fire
personnel into the building, but the structural requirements for housing
emergency personnel are even stricter, and the building is nowhere near meeting
those requirements.

Forsyth said
he was glad the city discussed potential future uses for the site as a public
safety facility including police, courts and a jail. He said the discussions
with engineers at Monday's meeting showed that the building could not be
repurposed for public safety facilities.

"I am glad
the mayor and council took the time to consider all of the new information,"
he said Tuesday. "I am looking forward
to our public forum on the new safety complex in Homewood."

The
discussion between Forsyth and city officials became heated at times, as
council members took issue with something Forsyth said in an email about not
being allowed to say everything he wanted at the last meeting.

"I
appreciate the council for getting this sorted out," McBrayer said. "It needs
to be done."

The city
will pay $50,000 for Tomlin Excavating to knock the building down. The area
around it will be used for parking until a permanent use is determined.
Officials said they were happy the building would come down before the walls
collapsed on their own.

"I am not
willing to bear the responsibility of doing nothing and letting something
terrible happen," council member Britt Thames said.

Updated at 8:13 a.m. Tuesday with an additional comment from Kevin Forsyth.